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Now here is one piece of fact that isn't quite known to many. Though Amitabh Bachchan would be seen as a central protagonist in Prakash Jha's AARAKSHAN now, the fact is that the actor and the director had made up their mind to do this film as good as eight years ago. This was during the days when Big B was shooting for DEEWAR-LET'S BRING OUR HEROES HOME while Jha was riding high on the success of GANGAAJAL.

'Yes, I remember visiting Mr. Bachchan on the sets of DEEWAR where he was shooting with Milan (Luthria). I had the subject of AARAKSHAN in hand and when I narrated the core of it, he agreed to work on it. After this I returned on the drawing board and started fleshing out the script further,' confirms Jha who in the meanwhile wrapped up his other film APAHARAN.

While Bachchan got busy with many other films in the interim period, Jha started spending more time in making AARAKSHAN as water tight as possible. Since the film deals with a sensitive issue, he didn't want to rush it up and hence went neck deep into research. Meanwhile he also started and wrapped up his another biggie RAAJNEETI before reaching out to Bachchan again with the ready script of AARAKSHAN.

'When RAAJNEETI was closer to release, I approached Mr. Bachchan again and he was convinced with what he read,' informs Jha, 'I was anyways in conversations with Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Manoj Bajpai as well and things started falling in place.'

Tell him that though typically there is a gap of many years between two of his films, this time around it seems to be an exception with two big films of his arriving within a year of each other. 'Well as I said the script was ready and the groundwork had been done so it was just a matter of getting all dates in place and began shooting,' says Jha.